Free Fall
by nine miles to go
Summary: Post prom, Santana finally confronts Puck about sophomore year.


Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or intend any copyright infringement, etcccc.

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><p><span>Free Fall<span>

Santana shows up at his house at three in the morning. The instant he opens the door she can see him take her in—deflated hair, broken heel, smeared make-up—and she feels a twist of shame, constricting her chest more than her ridiculously tight dress ever could.

Puck doesn't say anything. Just hands her the half-drunk, open beer bottle in his hands. She stares at it for a moment, then throws it back, barely tasting it on its way down.

"Better?" he says.

When he steps out of the doorway she lets herself into his house. It's familiar to her in all the wrong ways. In one quick sweep of the main floor she can tell a hundred stories—the kitchen counter, the chair in the sitting room, the creaky fifth step on the staircase. Her hands ball into fists and she hands him back the beer bottle before she throws it against something.

He sits down on the couch and ignores her while she stares. He has already swapped out his tuxedo for a pair of boxers and a white shirt. The nostalgic part of her wishes that she still felt that same old stirring in her chest that she felt when she first met Puck, when they were in their initial throes of pubescent, experimental passion.

Now she feels nothing, and she hasn't for a long time.

Puck looks up at her, but doesn't make any motion to invite her to sit beside him. For a moment their eyes connect, and she thinks maybe there's a chance that one of them will remember how they used to be, but just as soon as he looks at her his forehead creases into a frown.

"Are you really worked up about this stupid Prom Queen thing?"

No. "Yes."

Puck scoffs. "You're unbelievable."

A lot of men have said this to her before, but now there is no accompanying rush of pride, no overwhelming sense of accomplishment. She opens her mouth to say something, to protest, but she has nothing worth saying. She extends her hand and just as it connects with his shoulder he pulls it away.

"You're a _lesbian_ now," he says derisively.

Her jaw juts out defensively, her teeth already starting to gnash. "Got a problem about who I am?"

He rolls his eyes and gets up from the couch without looking at her. "Yeah," he says. "In fact, I do."

She follows him, her frizzing, ratty hair flying like a whip behind her. "What?" she snaps.

When he keeps walking, brushing her off, the tension only escalates. She stalks behind him angrily, coming within inches of his back, forcing him to acknowledge her, to follow through on his accusation.

"_What?_" she snaps again, right by his ear.

He rounds on her, his eyes lit up in a way she hasn't seen in months. "You're a liar."

For a moment she just stands there. Her heart thuds just once, just loudly enough that she's sure he can hear it, too. The two of them stare each other down—she's daring him to take it back, he's daring her to defend herself, and in the end she caves first.

"How dare you," she growls.

"Me?" He laughs at her, and in the moment that he throws his head back he looks so nonchalant, so uncaring, that she wants to smack him. He casually walks into the kitchen "I didn't do anything wrong. _You're _the one who's lying—to Brittany, to me, to yourself—"

"Shut up," she hisses. "You don't know _anything_—"

"Oh, please," he says. Now he's at the fridge, opening the door and reaching for another beer, still not looking at her—even in a conversation this intense, he wants her to know she's not worth his time. "I know all there is to know about you. You can play the victim of our relationship all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that I know more about you than any other person in your life."

She's so shocked by this claim that she can't think of a retort. He's crossing the line, saying that. It's almost as if he's trying to take ownership of her, of what makes her who she is. Who is he to say he knows her best?

He takes an unnecessarily long gulp of beer. The sound of him slurping so loudly is almost comical in the silence. Has he not realized the impact of what he just said? Or is he just ignoring it?

She is so absorbed in her thoughts that she's surprised when he speaks again. His voice is low, like he's talking to a small child, someone who has done something wrong and doesn't know any better. "You're not a lesbian," he says.

It all rises up in her chest in one breath. Fury, indignation, outrage—it's like a fire in her chest, suffocating her, charring her lungs, _how dare he—_and he takes a step back, anticipating her blows, but they don't come.

Instead she exhales. It's gone.

Puck stares at her uncertainly. This isn't following the script either one of them anticipated.

"I am," she says quietly.

He doesn't react except to keep staring at her, and in his eyes she sees the truth, the cold, unrelenting truth that neither of them can escape.

This time it is Santana who is forced to take a step back, and when she does, she wonders when everything between them shifted so dramatically. When was this line crossed? When did they stop messing around and start _knowing_ each other so deeply, with such a terrifying intensity? She stares at him and for the first time she sees more than just Puck. She sees the past ten years of her life through the eyes of the boy who moved in across the street, the boy she lost her virginity to, the boy who is looking her in the face and calling her a liar.

"I am," she says again, louder this time. "I'm a lesbian."

His eyes roll up to the ceiling, more exhausted than patronizing. "Just which one of us are you trying to convince?"

It occurs to her that she's shaking, but she can't do anything about it now, so she shoves past him and grabs another beer from the fridge. She pops it open and takes a long swallow of it, grateful for something to lessen the impact of the silence, for some time to regroup and try and think of what lie she can possibly tell next.

For a long time neither of them says anything. She finishes her beer. He's just leaning against the counter, staring at his shoes. Her mind is reeling and he's just standing there and she wants to scream at him, shake him, elicit some sort of reaction from him.

Suddenly it's not a matter of him accusing her of lying. It's a matter of him accusing her, and still not caring at all whether or not it's true.

"Fuck you," she says lowly.

He snorts.

"No, seriously, _fuck_ you," she emphasizes. "You have no right."

Only now does he scowl at her. "Hey, _you _were the one who barged into my house in the middle of the night, remember?"

"Clearly it was a mistake."

"Clearly!" he agrees, raising his voice. "I mean, god damn it, Santana, look at where you are right now! Why the fuck are you here tonight, anyway?" he demands. "Answer me that, Santana—if all this bullshit about you being a lesbian is true, then why, of all the fucking places you could be, are you _here?_"

"Because I knew you'd let me in!" she screamed back. "In some _sick_ way I still think of you as someone I can depend on." She starts stalking out of his kitchen, headed for the door. "But as it turns out," she says, turning her head around to yell face-on, "as it has, time and time again, you are nothing but a giant ass. Are you _happy?_"

"Happier than I've ever been, in fact," he says, loafing around, barely making an attempt to keep up with her.

She wants to leave in a huff but she can't find her purse. "Yeah, you and your new girlfriend—what a step up, Puck, _bravo—_"

"Lay off her!" Puck says. "At least she's not a judgmental _bitch_—"

"Oh, good! So she'll be _so_ much better about it when you _fuck her_ and knock _some other girl up_ a week later!"

Puck looks as though he's been slapped. Worse, even. There's a stilted halt, and then a shift, like a dangerous ripple in an already unruly tide of conversation that might just suck them both under.

Immediately she feels her skin redden from her toes to her forehead. She's humiliated. A whole year has passed since the incident and she was so strong then, so able to hide how it affected her, and she's furious with herself that after all that time it's now that she's crumbling.

Puck's eyes look dangerous. "I can't believe you. That had _nothing_ to do with you."

"Like _hell_ it didn't. So, Puck, did you fuck her _before_ or _after_ you told me you loved me?"

"Aw, come on, I didn't—"

"Mean it? Yeah, I figured you didn't," she spat back, lying to him and lying to herself. "In fact, I knew."

"Bullshit," he says. "How can you stand there and accuse me of anything when you were practically _whoring _yourself out to anyone who spared you a glance?"

Now he's hit a nerve. "I was a Cheerio! I had an image to maintain! But you, Puck, you knew better—you _knew_ I wasn't sleeping with them, so don't pretend that it's an _excuse_ for fucking little miss prissy pants—"

"What happened with Quinn was a mistake." He's practically inches from her face now, but there is nothing sexual about it, only charged, indignant energy between them. "A mistake that is going to haunt me for the rest of my life. Forgive me if apologizing to you about it wasn't top priority on my list."

Santana steps back, shaking her head. She's not falling for this bullshit. She knows he's in pain, she knows he has regrets, but that still doesn't mean he can get away with what he did to her.

"You knew how I felt about Quinn." There is weakness in her voice, so she takes a breath, determined to speak louder and overcome it. "I told you everything. How I was always competing with her, felt like I wasn't as talented, as pretty, as popular, and then you—you pretended to understand me. Accept me." She has to turn away from him to say the last part. "You said—you chose _me._"

Puck just stands there, staring past her at the wall.

"And then, after all that, you chose _her_."

All at once her knees feel weak with relief. This is it. This is what she's been holding so close to her chest all this time. And now that she's realized what it was, now that she has confronted him about it, she's almost giddy with the release of it.

Puck looks less than affected by it. He gives her a half-shrug, and she can tell he's already bottling this up, compartmentalizing it away as if it doesn't matter. "I don't know what to say to you. You're going to be mad at me either way."

This is such a typical unaccountable, careless Puck response that she almost laughs at him. "No. You're just too lazy to try and fix anything. But … I don't care."

And she doesn't. She really doesn't. It feels like she's in freefall, finally untangled from his messy, directionless life. She doesn't even address the Zizes issue. Zizes is a smart enough girl, and sooner or later she'll figure all this out for herself, hopefully long before she's in this with Puck as deep as Santana was.

"Fine," says Puck.

She finally finds her purse on the couch and walks over to pick it up. As shambled as she looks on the outside, for the first time in a long time, she feels whole. Some great burden has been lifted off of her shoulders. She is finished.

It's only when her hand touches the knob to the front door that he speaks again.

"That's it, then?" His face is almost rueful, but she knows a manufactured Puck expression when she sees one, and underlying it is a whiny little boy who thought he might get some action tonight. "You stormed all the way here and that's it?"

She nods. "That's it."

The door opens. She's halfway outside, already feeling the cool breeze on her cheeks.

"Oh, and Puck?" She turns around to look at him, and smiles sweetly. "You're right. I'm not a lesbian."

He almost looks hopeful. It's pathetic.

"But it doesn't really matter what I am," she continues, "because either way, I never want to be with you again."

The front door clicks shut behind her and she walks away, feeling more empowered with every step. She knows who she is, and she doesn't need anything—not Quinn, not Puck, not _anyone_—to define her. People could think whatever they wanted to. For once in her life, she blissfully, wonderfully, fantastically doesn't care.


End file.
